Improving Clinical Communication and Patient

Safety: Clinician-Recommended Solutions

Donna M. Woods, EdM, PhD; Jane L. Holl, MD, MPH; Denise Angst, PhD, RN;
Susan C. Echiverri, MD; Daniel Johnson, MD; David F. Soglin, MD; Gopal Srinivasan, MD;
Julia Barnathan; Laura Amsden, MSW, MPH; Lenny Lamkin, MPH; Kevin B. Weiss, MD, MPH

Abstract
Background: Teamwork and good communication are essential to providing high-quality care.
Methods: We examined clinician perspectives on clinician-to-clinician communication in the
context of pediatric patient safety using 90-minute focus groups comprising representatives from
varied clinician groups (physicians, nurses, pharmacists) in the five Chicago area hospitals of the
Pediatric Patient Safety Consortium. Using a standardized protocol, we asked participants to
address effective and problematic communication related to patient safety risk and any
recommended solutions to address these risks. Verbatim transcripts of the focus groups were
analyzed to identify major themes. In this article, we focus specifically on the potential patient
safety solutions clinicians recommended. Results: Sixty-five clinician focus groups were
conducted. The key solution-oriented themes included: (1) technology, health information
technology (HIT), and electronic medical record (EMR) elements and organization; (2)
coordination of care and communication around care plans; (3) communication in transitions; (4)
knowledge and experience gaps; (5) team-oriented solutions; (6) orders and consultations; (7)
organizational responsibility and communication about errors. Conclusion: Improving the
understanding of clinician-recommended solutions to address risk related to clinician
communication will direct targets for communication-related patient safety improvement.

Background
The burden of harm from patient safety events pervades the health care system and is directly
and indirectly experienced by many health care consumers. A conservative estimate suggests that
70,000 children annually experience adverse events sufficient to extend a hospital stay or cause
disability at discharge, and that 60 percent of these are preventable. 1 This is equivalent to 1 in
every 100 admissions. Despite significant improvements in adult medical care related to better
understanding of patient safety problems and new interventions to mitigate safety risks, there has
been only limited understanding and improvement in these areas related to the care of children.

Communication among clinicians in providing health care is a highly complex but important
function in the delivery of health care. In fact, clinician communication is consistently the most
frequent contributor to sentinel events reported to the Joint Commission. 2 Sentinel events are the
most serious and harmful of patient safety events and are a high priority for intervention and

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improvement. Problematic processes and systems for clinician communication have been shown
to lead to patient safety risk for children as well as for adults. 3, 4, 5, 6

Given that teamwork and good communication between and among clinicians is central to the
provision of high-quality health care for all patients, the processes and systems designed to
enhance such communication remain understudied. This multisite study was designed to explore
the contexts, processes, and systems of communication among pediatric clinicians and to elicit
clinicians’ recommendations for effective solutions to improve communication and enhance
patient safety. The results of this investigation should provide information that directly translates
to the development of interventions for improving the processes and systems of clinician
communication in a wide range of contexts and across a wide range of pediatric health care
organizations (e.g., community hospitals, academic institutions), ultimately reducing the risk of
serious patient safety events in pediatric health care.

Methods
The Chicago Pediatric Patient Safety Consortium
The Chicago Pediatric Patient Safety Consortium (Peds Consortium) was established to conduct
research concerning pediatric patient safety. The Peds Consortium consists of a group of five
Chicago area hospitals, including Advocate Hope Children’s Hospital, Advocate Lutheran
General Children’s Hospital, Children’s Memorial Hospital, John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook
County, and Mount Sinai Children’s Hospital. Such a consortium is necessary in order to have a
sufficiently large and varied population of pediatric patients for research findings to be
generalizable, to provide information about different pediatric health care settings (e.g., teaching
hospital, community hospital, freestanding children’s hospital, general hospital), and to provide
sufficient confidentiality protection to the participating institutions. In total, Peds Consortium
member institutions admit over 46,000 pediatric patients each year.

Data Collection
To examine clinician experience related to pediatric patient safety, a series of focus groups was
conducted at each site. Focus groups have been shown to be an effective method for
identification of systemic patient safety risks. 7 Data collection for this study consisted of focus
groups that comprised hospital-based attending physicians, residents, nurses, and pharmacists;
transport teams; and respiratory therapists currently involved in the delivery of pediatric patient
care in one of the five Peds Consortium hospitals. Clinicians in each of the participating
institutions were invited to participate in a focus group regarding effective and problematic
communication in providing patient care.

We convened focus groups within each discipline (e.g., neurology, neurosurgery, surgery,
intensive care unit [ICU], emergency medicine, etc.) by profession and professional level (nurse
managers, staff nurses, attending physicians, fellow/resident physicians, advanced practice
nurses, and nurse administrative coordinators). This group composition was intended to enhance
the participants’ comfort level and willingness to speak freely about communication with staff
from other disciplines. Clinicians were selected based on their service, profession, and

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professional level (e.g., a group of neurology attending physicians, a group of neurology
residents and fellows, and nurses from the pediatric ICU).

Trained facilitators conducted the 90-minute focus groups using a standardized protocol that
directed the group’s discussions toward the processes of communication (i.e., in person,
telephone, medical chart) and the contexts that resulted in either effective or problematic
clinician-to-clinician communication leading to patient safety risk. Clinicians frequently offered
solutions to the problematic communication contexts, processes, and systems they described. The
focus groups were audiotaped then transcribed. The number of focus groups was determined by
“saturation,” the point at which additional data collection no longer generated new
understanding.

Participants in the focus groups were recruited from the above targeted services and professions.
Recruitment included a presentation of the project in departmental and unit meetings and a letter
sent to selected clinicians. The letter and presentation provided an overview of the study and
informed the individuals that someone would be contacting them in order to schedule their
participation in a focus group. Focus group participation was voluntary, and the focus group
discussions were confidential. No participant names were recorded; participants identified
themselves by using a colored card to indicate when they were speaking (e.g., Dr. Pink, Nurse
Blue, etc.) The audiotaped discussions were transcribed in such a way that no identifiable
information regarding patients, clinicians, or institutions was included.

The Institutional Review Boards for each of the participating institutions and for Northwestern
University approved this study.

Analysis and Interpretation of Data

The focus group transcripts were reviewed by two investigators to inductively develop codes for
effective and problematic communication using the Constant Comparative method 8 and included
the following iterative steps:
1. Overall review of the transcripts.
2. Detailed review of a few text reports to formulate meaning.
3. Review of additional reports to develop preliminary categories.
4. Coding of data by category and determination of the need for new categories and grouping of
related categories to develop overarching categories (any discrepancies in coding were
resolved through consensus based on the transcript language).
5. Sorting of data by category, and review of the performance of preliminary analysis of each
category.
6. Deductive review for parallelism and clarity of categories.
7. Classification of all data into the developed categories.

These were refined through review by the remaining Peds Consortium investigators (Steps 4–6).
The focus group transcripts and the classification taxonomy of patient safety-related effective
and problematic communication were entered into the analytic software ATLAS.ti (ATLAS.ti

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Scientific Software Development, Berlin, Germany; www.atlasti.com/index.html) for the final
classification (Step 7) and to conduct the analysis. The reliability of the categories was assessed
through a process that involved independent coding of the textual data by at least two
independent reviewers. When discrepancies occurred in the coding, reconciliation of these
discrepancies was finalized through consensus according to the transcript language and code
definitions. An additional (third) cross-institutional reviewer also reviewed four to five
transcripts to further ensure consistency of the code application across the Peds Consortium.

The analysis identified patient safety-related effective and problematic communication scenarios.
Clinicians linked solutions to the problematic scenarios, and these were associated with codes
related to the problematic communication code(s) they were intended to address or to code(s) for
effective communication, for which an additional application to reduce risk was described. The
recommended solutions were then aggregated according to the patient safety-related problems
for which they were proposed.

Hierarchy of Interventions
To further assess the clinician-recommended patient safety solutions, the transcript sections of
recommended solutions were reviewed and classified by the theoretically derived hierarchy of
safety interventions developed by Vaida in 1999. 9

Results
Focus Groups
Sixty-three focus groups were conducted, which included 274 participating clinicians across all
of the focus groups. Focus groups included 2 to 11 participating clinicians, with a mean of 4.4
and a median of 4.0 participants. A 90-minute standardized focus group protocol was used for all
the focus groups in each of the five
Table 1. Number of focus group
Chicago area Peds Consortium hospitals.
participants by clinician type
Table 1 shows the distribution of
clinicians by profession and level. Number of
focus group
Coding of focus group transcripts Clinician type participants
resulted in the identification of 252
Attendings 66
clinician-recommended solutions to
address the patient safety-related Residents/fellows 70
communication problems described in Nurses 107
the provision of health care. A review of
the transcript of recommended solutions Nurse managers 12
revealed three transcript exerpts that Other
were workarounds, done to cope rather (e.g., respiratory therapists, transport
19
than address the safety problem. This team, pharmacy, imaging
resulted in 249 clinician-recommended technicians)
solutions for analysis. Total 274

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Recommended Types of Safety Solutions
Table 2 shows the types of interventions recommended to address specific patient safety-related
communication problems and the number of times, across all of the focus groups, that these
solutions were recommended. Recommendations fell into four primary domains of solutions, and
these applied to many different types of patient safety-related communication problems. The
primary domains of solutions included: technology-oriented, team-oriented, educational, and
clinical or organization-related. The most frequently suggested technology-oriented solutions
involved defining effective elements and organization of the electronic medical record (EMR)
system, followed by the use of cell phones and text pagers for accessing clinicians and
prioritizing calls. The most frequent team-oriented solution applied to rounds, suggesting that for
rounds to be maximally effective and to reduce the opportunity for miscommunications, rounds
should be scheduled, structured, of a set duration, and should most importantly involve all key
team members. A recurrent recommendation was that nurses be notified of new orders or a
change in the management plan, whether in person or through the use of technology. The
recommendation to add advanced practice nurses or hospitalists to the clinical team to provide
pediatric-specific medical knowledge and coordination was also common.

Table 2. Clinician-recommended solutions for patient safety-related

communication problems
Solutions
Number of
Communication Types of times
problem solutions Description of solution suggested
Consolidated clinical information in the EMR
Technology, including medications, labs, imaging, orders – 25
Fragmented medical
EMR elements, “one source of truth”
record information
& organization
Computerizing the ED “white board” 2
Cell phones and text pagers;
22
computerized clinical information – EMR
Computerized, current, accurate on-call lists
4
with phone numbers in the computer

Technology Voice recognition software for documentation,

4
to improve documentation
Automatic faxing of notes for a patient’s
2
Coordination of care hospitalization to their community pediatrician
& communication GPS for transport 1
around care plans
Remote technology enabled care conferences 1
Rounds: Structured, scheduled,
interdisciplinary rounds at the patient’s
26
bedside with all key team members present
Team-oriented (e.g., attendings, nursing, pharmacy, RT)
Conduct rounds in a quiet space 1
Role clarity in general and particularly 5
in emergencies

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Table 2. Clinician-recommended solutions for patient safety-related
communication problems (continued)
Solutions
Number of
Communication Types of times
problem solutions Description of solution suggested
Care conferences 3
Verification of problems and completed orders 3
Cross-departmental meeting of
Coordination of care 3
clinicians and staff
& communication Team-oriented
around care plans (continued) Someone taking charge in a conflict 2
(continued) Coordination regarding medical equipment
1
needed for surgical procedures
Observing the processes of other
2
services/units
Accurate clinician contact information in the
2
computer
Standardized sign-out 3
Accessible clinicians with needed knowledge
3
Technology on nights & weekends
Standardized sign-out which includes
1
“why this plan”
Protocol for determining admitting service in
2
transfers from the ED and PICU
Communication
in transitions Attending-to-attending communication for
2
inter-facility transport
Relationships across services 2
Proactive notification of a problem with
2
Team-oriented test or sample
Update on delays 1
Staggering shift changes 1
APN to coordinate discharge 1
Role model respectful communication 1
CPOE 11
Decision support 5
Automatic notification of an order made and
5
completed
Technology-
Orders Automatic weight-based dose calculation and
oriented 2
checking
Automated order tracking 2
Order lists in one place in EMR 2
Accurate, accessible on-call lists 2

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Table 2. Clinician-recommended solutions for patient safety-related
communication problems (continued)
Solutions
Number of
Communication Types of times
problem solutions Description of solution suggested
Provide and make information about the
specific prep needed for specific tests easily 1
accessible in computer
Notifying nurse of an order or change in plans 19
Indication included on orders 7
Double-checking orders 5
Team-oriented
Orders (continued) Attending-to-attending communication to 4
(continued)
resolve patient management conflicts
Establishing a central line service 1
Change imaging order form to standardize the
1
communication to include needed information
Consult service to write orders, managing 1
service to sign
Technology- Consultations typed in EMR for accessibility
3
oriented and legibility
Consultation Acknowledge consult and provide feedback 4
Team-oriented Standardized and clarified pre-anesthesia
4
assessment
Technology-
Palm Pilots® with PDR for surgical residents 2
oriented
APNs, hospitalists, pediatric liaison 17
Going up to the next level in
5
the clinical hierarchy
Team-oriented Attending to attending communication 5
Clear roles 2
Standardized sign-outs 2
Knowledge
experience gaps Tiered consultation intensity 2
Orientation for surgical residents 5
Attending availability on nights weekends
3
and holidays
Screening resident read imaging results
Education 1
before releasing
Motivate residents by giving tests 1
Comanagement of surgical patients in the
1
PICU for educational requirements

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 Table 2. Clinician-recommended solutions for patient safety-related
communication problems (continued)
Solutions
Number of
Communication Types of times
problem solutions Description of solution suggested
Technology-
Cell phones and text pagers 7
oriented
APNs as physician extenders 2
Clinician availability
The night operator knows who to call 1
Team-oriented
Attending physicians on call making it clear
1
they want to be called
Standardizing processes 4
Effective computer systems to facilitate
2
clinical thinking
Clinical Role clarity 2
Organizational organization Availability of knowledgeable staff at night
2
responsibility for and on weekends
safety Policy for resolving a conflicts regarding
1
admitting service
Multidisciplinary discussions of errors
Learning from 3
and solutions
errors
Thank people for reporting 2
EMR = electronic medical record; ED = emergency department; GPS = global positioning system; RT = respiratory
therpaist; PICU = pediatric intensive care unit; APN = advanced practice nurse; CPOE = computerized physician
order entry; PDR = physician’s desk reference

Some unique yet interesting recommendations could prove useful. For example, the use of a
global positioning system (GPS) to locate and track patients in intra- and interfacility transport;
having clinicians from one unit or service observe the operations in another unit or service to
better understand the processes, perspective, and priorities of the other; the suggestion of a
specialized central line service; and facilitating patient care conferences involving multiple
services by conducting them remotely. Table 2 provides a template of ideas for safety
improvement investigation.

There were many contexts of problematic communication for which no solutions were
recommended. Of 180 possible classifications for problematic or effective communication, 133
were linked to a solution or referred to as a solution. A few examples of codes for which no
solution was offered include the following:
• Lack of notification of responsible clinicians: “Clinician has difficulty, cannot, or fails to
identify or notify other responsible clinicians about patient care issue.”
• Acuity assessment: “Lack of recognition of signs and symptoms of acute clinical status.”
• Orders not understood: “Insufficient communication to the responsible clinician or
insufficient knowledge base of clinician responsible for carrying out the order to understand
order.”

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• Consultations for surgical patients: “Insufficient pediatric knowledge base of surgical
clinicians caring for surgical patients with medical conditions, leading to missed indications
for consultation or lack of understanding or misunderstanding the recommendations.”
• Lack of participation in discharge planning: “Failure to prepare and/or communicate
adequate and relevant discharge information for the patient’s discharge.”

Hierarchy of Intervention Effectiveness

The hierarchy of safety interventions developed by Vaida9 was slightly modified through the
analysis of these data in order to appropriately classify solutions not addressed by the existing
hierarchy of interventions. Additions included staff organization, risk assessment, learning from
errors, and personal initiative. The frequent identification of the addition of advanced practice
nurses (APNs), hospitalists, and occasionally, pharmacists as a method to improve
communication suggested the need for this addition. There were also recurrent suggestions of
utilizing individual initiative or individual vigilance. While recommending individual initiative
be applied to improve the safety of a particular system is not a highly effective systemic
intervention, it bears reporting that this was a recurrent recommendation from clinicians to
improve communication. The resulting hierarchy of interventions is as follows:
1. Forcing functions.
2. Automation, computerization, and technology.
3. Standardization and protocols.
4. Staffing organization.
5. Policies, rules, and expectations.
6. Checklists and double-checks.
7. Risk assessment and learning from errors.
8. Education and information.
9. Personal initiative – vigilance.

As presented in Table 3, automation, computerization, and technology were the most frequent
levels of intervention recommended by clinicians to improve communication effectiveness
related to patient safety. These were followed by standardization and protocol implementation,
which combined, represented more than half of the suggestions. Twenty-one percent of
clinician’s recommendations were related to personal initiative. Forcing functions were
infrequently recommended or described.

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 Table 3. Hierarchy of interventions
Frequency (%)
Hierarchy of intervention
interventions suggested Type Examples of interventions

Auto-faxing
medical “When we sign off, the report can be auto-faxed to the referring physician.”
information
1. Forcing functions 3 (1%)
“Computer ordering systems… you do not have to do a lot of calculating, you are
CPOE confirming right there that the dosage is correct. It has limits that won’t let you
order too large a dose. I think that is a huge issue.”

“…The institution that I trained at had a much more advanced system. So the
Computerized resident at night at 2 in the morning admitting a patient had every clinic note, every
EMR discharge summary on the computer, every radiologic procedure, medication list,
discharge from every prior hospitalization…..”

“There should be a way I could say to my computer, this is my subset of patients,

2. Automation, Automated and the computer has all the names, and have it generate a list for me, name,
computerization, & access to current vitals, or abnormal vitals for the last 24 hours, current medications, location
technology 69 (28%)
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information for of patient, and a big black box for me to write my to-do stuff. That would save an
sign-out enormous amount of time for all the residents, because we spend a lot of time
doing data entry.”

Technology – “That’s not here. The Wednesday before last, I was the operating surgeon at that
voice hospital, and every note I dictated in the operating room was on the system in the
recognition recovery room when I left with the child (inaudible), so there are ways to do this,
software and I’ve been to other hospitals, and they are using them now.”

“So setting up some sort of a protocol for transferring patients from the ED to the
Protocol
floor or from out of the PICU.”

“When they sign on (inaudible) each other, I think we need to have a standardized
3. Standardization & form, the nurses, so they can transmit information the same day; every nurse
61 (24%)
protocols signing off to the next nurse will have the same form just as the physicians have,
Standardized
and they are getting the same information, rather than some signing off elaborately
communication
and some signing off very brief, and then information getting missed; and that
happens when we shift, when one nurse transfers it to the other nurse, information
does get missed.”
 Table 3. Hierarchy of interventions (continued)
Frequency (%)
Hierarchy of intervention
interventions suggested Type Examples of interventions

“I have been a big proponent of a lot of hospital having more nurse practitioners,
because I think nurse practitioners have a lot of things to offer, that this is their
base, they are staying here forever, communication can be much better. For
Advance
example, if residents were in the ER for 2 hours, they could know that their floor
practice nurses
was being taken care of, which that is not always the way it is right now, because I
4. Staffing may be in clinic, I may have gone home already. So I think the hospital, in general,
organization 21 (8%)
particularly our service, could benefit from having more nurse practitioners.

“He made a decision, a bad decision in terms of communication. Whereas, if you

have a hospitalist, a physician, and if they know what the protocols are, they
Hospitalist
probably have a less chance of making a mistake, in terms of who to call, who not
to call, what to do, what not to do.”

“There is the issue of which service they are getting admitted…if we call a service
Policy for the
because we think a patient should be admitted…and they said that that is not an
determination
appropriate admission for their service, it is then their responsibility to find another
of the inpatient
service for the patient to go to. I think it is good, because it gets us out of trying to
admitting
go back and forth and be mediating something that needs to be worked out
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5. Policies, rules, & service

26 (10%) amongst the individuals involved.”
expectations
Expectations: ”I’m thinking to improve this situation, it’s important that during rounds, between us,
Nurses and that a nurse clinician, a nurse manager, or a charge nurse would make rounds with
nursing input us, so if there’s a problem with a patient the nurse knew about it, she related it to
included in the charge nurse, and if the charge nurse makes rounds together with us right then
rounds and there, she can tell us what is the patient’s problem.”

”Or even if they sent their orders down from the floor and put ‘child needs sedation,
child NPO’d, or child has an ID.’ Put it in the check-in, on the check-in
6. Checklists &
18 (7%) Checklist document…They actually should have to check-off that these things have been
double-checks
accomplished.…even if they put on there, you know, the patient is intubated, the
patient has an IV – give us the information that we need to complete the study.”
 Table 3. Hierarchy of interventions (continued)
Frequency (%)
Hierarchy of intervention
interventions suggested Type Examples of interventions
“The problem right now in our hospital is that now everything is on the computer,
Double-check
6. Checklists & so if you do write it down, and you do want an order executed, I know the nurses
18 (7%) to make sure
double-checks check it every hour, 45 minutes, hour and a half, something like that; but it still
(continued) nurse is aware
(continued) depends on when they check it…but that is when I think the verbal system is even
of the order
more important to tell them, ‘Hey, I put in this order.’”
“We addressed system issues every month as a medical practice review of cases
Discussing discussed. Where did treatment fall down? What are the system issues that are
7. Risk Assessment errors responsible? And it is really just not doctors miscommunicating that is the issue. It
& communication 6 (2%) is really what systems are in place that we have for our patients’ treatment.”
errors
Acknowledge “Somebody noticed and some action was taken – even with a note, ‘Thank you for
reports letting us know about that,’ would be fine.”
“We had a couple of issues with anesthesia communication. We have to go back
12

to the OR with certain cases for the heart patients, and they had actually, for
specific instance, they were getting new circuits for their ventilator, and the
specialty gas we needed to bring back our attachments did not fit onto their
Education
ventilator circuit. So that was just a big… they did not tell us. We were back there
ready to go, and this child has got an open heart, and we are not following through
8. Education & with anything, we cannot do anything. So we did do an education piece that they
25 (10%) needed to be informed… We needed to be informed of things.”
information
“Especially when you are calling to find out about some obscure test and what kind
of tubes do they need it to go into. Sometimes, that is a much more laborious
process than I think it should be…I requested something, but I never heard
Information
anything…. go into the lab portal; there could be a place where you can type in the
test that you want, and then they can give you the test color…before you draw; it
does not have to be fancy.”
 Table 3. Hierarchy of interventions (continued)
Frequency (%)
Hierarchy of intervention
interventions suggested Type Examples of interventions

“…and then again it depends on the bedside nurse’s personality. Some of the
Personality more difficult subspecialties, I do not take them personally, and I go up to them,
and I have no trouble talking to them, even if they are in a bad mood.”
9. Personal initiative 21 (8%)
“Different things that should have been done were not done for the baby, and that
Individual you have to take initiative, especially if you are following a baby to look, to see
initiative what was done…and therefore, I had to come to the conclusion that I have to go
by my own mind…”

Total 249
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Discussion
Technology Solutions
Health information technology (HIT) and suggestions for the organization of the EMR
information were the most frequent safety solutions recommended by clinicians to address
problems in clinician-to-clinician communication. HIT and EMR solutons were recommended to
address many disparate types of communication problems. Entire fields have grown up around
the best methods for development and implementation of HIT and the EMR. This literature
generally recommends substantial involvement of frontline clinicians in EMR development and
organization of HIT and EMR applications to enable the effective expansion of electronic tools
that would support the work flow of medical practice and facilitate clinical thinking. Clinicians
describe multiple communication problems and patient safety risks that would be addressed
specifically by organizing medical information in such a manner to systematically provide easily
accessible summary lists of all orders, labs, and consults (with contact information for the
consults). Likewise, clinicians frequently recommended compiling a complete list of a patient’s
medications in one place, with the capability to check and reconcile these. Clinicians discussed
the potential for the EMR to become the desired “one source of truth”8 for medications and other
medical information. This notion of a “one source of truth” did not apply just to patients’
medical information, but also to accurate on-call lists and clinician contact information.

HIT solutions thought to address patient safety risks also included the use of automated functions
and decision support within the EMR to remind and support memory, check calculations, limit
dosages, and bring forward information (e.g., an allergy or a potential drug-drug interaction).
Automation was also recommended as a tool to support communication between residents and
nurses (e.g., to provide alerts of new orders or to support cross-departmental communication
with the lab regarding problems with a specimen for a lab order, blood samples, or verification of
results from completed lab work).

Voice recognition software was advanced as a tool to facilitate one’s own and other clinicians’
documentation of needed clinical management information. GPS systems were described as
promising for locating and tracking patients for both intra- and interfacility transport.

Cell phones and text pagers were described by clinicians as tools to locate clinicians and to
provide a vehicle for needed communication. These tools can enable the receiver of the
communication to prioritize a particular communication and to indicate the need for emergent or
routine response as appropriate. Cell phones and text pagers were described as having the
additional advantage of providing verification of the receipt of information, developing
expectations for the initiator of the response, and in the case of cell phone, providing the ability
to ask on-the-spot questions, clarify issues, and develop a plan. Cell phones were suggested as a
potential tool to establish a clinical case conference by enabling several clinicians to be brought
together over the phone for remote case conferences, which would facilitate communication
among the clinicians caring for patients who have multiple services involved in their care.

The potential of HIT to assist the processes of communication and decisionmaking and to
overcome many of the problems with hard-to-read, inaccessible, and fragmented medical records
is great. However, there were significant drawbacks in the current organization of the systems

14
that were currently deployed that led to new risks and challenged clinicians’ ability to deliver
safe care.

Team-Oriented Solutions
Rounds. In addition to technologic solutions, clinicians thought many team-oriented solutions
might hold promise for improving clinician communication and patient safety systems.
Rounds—a time-honored method of clinical communication—were described as effective
because this method of clinical communication brings together the group of clinicians caring for
a patient and enables discussion of the patient’s status and the care plan for that day. In addition,
when rounds take place at the patient’s bedside, senior clinicians could easily verify the
information presented. However, the effectiveness of rounds would quickly diminish if all key
team members were not present or included, and when appropriate preparation is not made.
Furthermore, clinicians described additional advantages to rounds that occur at regularly
scheduled times, take place in a structured format, and include all key team members.

Including information, knowledge, and the pespective of all team members represents an
important safety challenge that was commonly expressed as potentially a significant safety
solution. Scheduling of rounds was described as helping to minimize the need, particularly by
surgical clinicians, to leave before all patients have been discussed. Having structured rounds
would enable an easy-to-follow flow of information and encourage preparation. Defining and
including key clinical team members is an important aspect of team communication.

Both physicians and nurses acknowledged the importance of the clinical information and
perspective on the patient that nurses can provide to the development of the patient’s care plan
during rounds. Several methods were recommended to include nurses or nursing input—e.g.,
residents getting reports from nurses prior to rounds, scheduling rounds so that nurses could
participate for their patients, and having the charge nurse participate in rounds.

Clinicians suggested the inclusion of pharmacists and nutritionists into interdisciplinary rounds
to address particular patient safety risks in pediatrics. Respiratory therapists were thought to
provide needed clinical information and perspective for their patients. It was suggested that there
be more than one service round for patients when multiple services were actively involved in the
patient’s care.

Communication in transitions. Clinicians had comparatively few suggestions for addressing

the problem of communication across transitions of care. Most transitions are very complex and
actually involve multiple transitions. A change in unit (the place where the patient is being cared
for) also involves a change in the managing service (the specific medical specialty caring for the
patient), and a change in the specific nurse, specific resident physician, and specific attending
physician in charge of managing the patient’s care. Clinician shift changes involve at least one
clinician but frequently can involve transitions of several clinicians at the same time. At the time
of a nurse shift change there also may be a change in the resident and attending physicians.
Standardization and protocols were the most freqently recommended solutions for sign-out as
well as determining the admitting service from the ED, but other team-oriented suggestions, such
as the availability of senior clinicians, good contact information, relationships across services,
and respect were also considered to be of assistance.

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Gaps in Knowledge and Experience
Most inpatient care for children is provided in general hospitals with a small pediatric service.
These institutions may have no pediatric physicians on staff, and indeed, they may lack basic
pediatric equipment and skills. 10 Furthermore, resident physicians must receive training in
pediatric health care, but these resident physicians have had minimal or no previous pediatric
training. During this “rotation,” residents provide care to pediatric patients and are supervised by
trained pediatric attending physicians. Pediatric care involves caring for children of varying ages
and stages with varying normal ranges of clinical values and test results and care processes and
priorities. This variability of signs and symptoms for different age groups of children provides a
challenge. In addition, the medical requirements of children with special health care needs (e.g.,
feeding tubes, oxygen, shunts) that increase complexity and need for expertise further intensify
these challenges in institutions with nonpediatric-trained clinicians, including nonpediatric-
trained residents and nurses. 11

Knowledge and experience gaps are a challenge of particular importance in pediatrics.

Communication in the context of inexperience and lack of contextual knowledge is complicated
and can easily lead to misommunications and misunderstandings. Of the many solutions to
communication problems related to lacking requisite knowledge and experience in the health
care of pediatric patients, most frequently suggested were supplementing the team with
additional types of clinical postitions to provide supportive knowledge assistance, such as APNs,
hospitalists, or pediatric surgical liaisons. The substantial pediatric knowledge base and
experience of these clinicians provides an additional teaching function and an important
safeguard for the recognition of “when a clinician doesn’t know what they don’t know.” It was
also recommended that nurses “jump over” the traditional hierarchy of communication in
medicine and speak directly to attending physicians if they believe a resident does not understand
the pediatric clinical picture. Direct attending-physician-to-attending-physician communication
was also suggested as a vehicle to address these knowledge and experience gaps.

These proposed additions to the clinical team—APNs, hospitalists, and pediatric surgical
liaisons—have also been identified as resources for filling the needed role among clinicians
involved in the care of pediatric patients, particularly pediatric surgical patients, for coordinating
care by different levels of physicians across services.

Recommended Organizational Responsibility for Safety

Clinicians recognized the broader role of the overall organization and organizational leadership
to effect improvement, and they attributed the responsibility for many specific solutions to the
institution. Examples include the responsibility for standardizing processes; the effectiveness of
computer technologies, such as the EMR; role clarity, including the establishment and
enforcement of the “chain of responsibility,” and how and when to circumvent this for the safe
care of pediatric patients.

Ultimate accountability for clinician availabilty and for methods and systems for avoiding and
resolving conflicts in care management was considered an organizational leadership
responsibility. Finally, clinicians ascribed the responsibility for institutional learning from errors
to leadership and suggested that cross-departmental, multidisciplinary contexts for learning about

16
errors as a potentially meaningful approach. Furthermore, they suggested that positively
acknowledging the reports of problems is important and should be embraced.

Levels of Intervention
It is encouraging, in the current sociohistorical context of medicine, to find that clinicians
frequently recommended use of standardization and protocols. After decades of resistance to
standardization and protocols, these findings suggest that the safety value of standardization of
systems and processes and proscribed protocols may be rising in clinicians’ awareness, with the
recognition that medicine is no longer “an individual sport but a team sport.”

Conclusion
Involvement of frontline clinicians in the development and deployment of patient safety
interventions is essential to understanding the contextual environment in which the risks exist
and the impact of change on that environment. Clinicians have important contributions to make
to inform interventions for patient safety improvement and the redesign of safer health care.
Furthermore, according to the heirarchy of interventions, the clinician’s safety recommendations
in this study were largely at the more effective end of the hierarchy.

Improved understanding of the role of clinician-to-clinician communication in patient safety and

clinicians recommendations’ for solutions is a first step to effectively implementing interventions
to improve communication between pediatric clinicians and thereby improve the safety of care
delivered to pediatric patients. These findings provide a roadmap to direct the next round of
efforts to improve the safety and reliability of systems and processes for clinician
communicaiton in pediatric health care.

Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the generous support of the Michael Reese Health Trust through funding the
Peds Consortium to conduct this study to investigate strategies for improving clinician
communication in pediatric health care. We also acknowledge the support of the Otho S. A.
Sprague Memorial Institute and the Chicago Patient Safety Forum, an initiative of the Institute of
Medicine of Chicago in the development of the Peds Consortium.

Author Affiliations
Institute for Healthcare Studies, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University (Dr.
Woods, Dr. Holl, Ms. Barnathan, Ms. Amsden, Dr. Weiss); Children’s Memorial Hospital (Dr.
Holl); John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County (Dr. Echiverri, Dr. Soglin); University of
Chicago, Comer Children's Hospital (Dr. Johnson); Mt. Sinai Children’s Hospital (Dr.
Srinivasan); Institute of Medicine of Chicago (Mr. Lamkin).

Address correspondence to: Donna Woods, EdM, PhD, Research Assistant Professor, Institute
for Healthcare Studies, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, 676 St. Clair St.,

17
Suite 200, Chicago, IL 60011. Telephone: 312-695-7004 or 847-571-2451; fax: 312-695-4307;
e-mail: woods@northwestern.edu.
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